News:

"There is a terrible desperation to the increasingly pathetic rationalizations from the climate denial camp. This comes as no surprise if you take the long view; every single undone paradigm in history has died kicking and screaming, and our current petroleum paradigm 🐉🦕🦖 is no different. The trick here is trying to figure out how we all make it to the new ⚡ paradigm without dying ☠️ right along with the old one, kicking, screaming or otherwise." - William Rivers Pitt

Eddie: You don't think Cuba is more repressive than the US? I suggest you try to move there. You can't.

That's biased BS. You probably can't become a citizen of Cuba unless you marry a Cuban, but that's the same anywhere. But you can go there for a holiday, or for a political conference (I know people who have been there, organised thru WSWS), and in Michael Moore's "Sicko" he took a dozen sick US citizens there and they got treated in hospital for free, and medicines free. He wasn't allowed to go to the US part at Guantanamo. After 50 years of US sanctions, their infrastructure is very run down, but that would be true in any country.

The ones that want to leave are the ones who have availed themselves of all the socialised free education, and then want to move somewhere else where they can earn more money for themselves and not pay Cuban taxes. Greedy scum in other words.

The christian asylum seeker from Cuba I met in 2010-11 spoke English well, so I assume their education is at least half in English. That fits them perfectly for running offshore call centres for corporations or becoming bartenders and tour guides, making the big bucks compared to anyone still working for the Cuban govt "pretending to work and pretending to be paid". Perhaps taxing this free market that appeared as Castro was on his death bed can fund the govt and improve wages. But u have to say also that if these people leave, whether they have their Cuban qualifications recognized I have no idea, but if they even work as low skill minimum wage for greed, their education failed.

Under communism all children are also wards of state and so are schooled in communism. All forms of art, music and literature are only approved to glorify the revolution. The same principle applies to all work, hence the hammer and sickle symbols. The sickles are a little ironic if there are no crops after scorched earth purges though. Anyway, would a programmer who likes to to work on apple, android and ms windows be as much a failure of communist education and greedy scum, as a painter or sculptor who isn't interested in portraits of revolutionaries?

Eddie, EVERYTHING we have access to in the USA is based on Imperial REPRESSION of other countries AND the majority of non-wealthy Americans.

How can I say such an "outrageous" statement?

Ask yourself a simple question? How would you feel if you HAD TO buy and sell everything you depend on with Russian Rubles?

Would that bother you a teensy weensy bit?

I think it would put a MOUNTAIN SIZED BURR under your Texas saddle.

It's NOT "okay" because War loving Incarceration Nation USA does it to everyone that ain't rich here and everyone that don't live in the USA.

Please DO NOT tell me that we "had to do that before some other country did it to us 😇 ". That is not a justification for routine repression. And yeah, economic repression DIRECTLY translates into slave wages, poverty, lack of freedom, strife, wars, murder, and so on HERE and abroad. To pretend it doesn't is sophistry.

Cuba is simply not in the same ball park with the level of repression the USA is NUMERO UNO at on this planet.

We did not get our World Reserve Currency “exorbitant privilege” by being the "land of the free". We GOT THAT BY REPRESSION here, there and everywhere, period. Everything the American Imperial Economic Hitmen have done is repression, whether you wish to admit it or not. No other country on the planet, no matter how many they killed for this or that reason, comes close to our level of despotic behavior, except for England and Spain a couple of centuries back, on a much, much smaller scale.

The phrase “exorbitant privilege” was originally coined in the 1960s by Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, then the French Minister of Finance. He was referring to the massive benefits imbuing to the United States for having the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency. Barry Eichengreen, Professor of Economics and Political Science at the University of California Berkeley, summarized it thusly:

Quote

“It costs only a few cents for the Bureau of Engraving and Printing to produce a $100 bill, but other countries had to pony up $100 of actual goods in order to obtain one.” Commodities are priced in dollars; trade exchange takes place in dollars; current account deficits are priced that way too. Enormous benefits accrue to the USA because of it.

Logged

Leges Sine Moribus VanaeFaith, if it has not works, is dead, being alone.

Washington has decided to walk out of the UN Human Rights Council, accusing the body of hypocrisy. The US has long cited concerns about the body’s “anti-Israel bias.”

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and US envoy to the UN Nikki Haley announced the decision at a press conference Tuesday afternoon.

“The US is officially withdrawing from the UN Human Rights Council,” Haley said, calling it a “hypocritical and self-serving organization that makes a mockery of human rights.”

“American participation is the last shred of credibility the council has,” Haley argued. “That is precisely why we must leave.”

“The Human Rights Council is a poor defender of human rights. Worse than that, it has become an exercise in shameless hypocrisy,” Pompeo said, blasting the council for passing more resolutions against Israel than against the rest of the world combined.

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu thanked the US for the “courageous decision” to leave the body, which he called a “biased, hostile, anti-Israel organization that has betrayed its mission of protecting human rights.”

“The US decision to leave this prejudiced body is an unequivocal statement that enough is enough,” Netanyahu said. “Israel welcomes the American announcement.”

This is the first time a member of the council would leave the body voluntarily. The US was halfway through its three-year term on the 47-member panel.

On Monday, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein criticized Washington over the “unconscionable” policy of separating children of immigrants who cross the border illegally and holding them in detention centers.

“I call on the United States to immediately end the practice of forcible separation of these children,” al-Hussein said.

While the timing of the US exit from the UN body coincides with this criticism, Washington’s objections to the Human Rights Council over the years have mostly been in regard to Israel. Ambassador Haley has accused the council of a “relentless, pathological campaign” against Israel, and said the US would leave unless the body gets rid of its “chronic anti-Israel bias.”

Shortly after its establishment in 2006, the council voted to make a review of alleged human rights abuses by Israel a permanent feature of every session, known as Agenda Item 7. Likewise, the body’s special rapporteur on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the only expert whose mandate is not time-limited.

The George W. Bush administration boycotted the council at its inception, but the Obama administration decided to “re-engage” with the body in 2009. Even so, in 2011 Secretary of State Hillary Clinton accused the council of “structural bias” against Israel.

Domestically, some critics of President Donald Trump are citing the move as proof his administration does not believe in human rights and rule of law.

The decision “sends a clear message that the Trump administration does not intend to lead the world when it comes to human rights,” said Senator Chris Coons (D-Delaware), who serves on the Foreign Relations Committee.

Leaving the council is unlikely any immediate practical implications for US diplomacy, aside from allowing the UN body to continue condemnations of Israel without much in the way of opposition. Last month, when the council voted to investigate the killing of over 100 Palestinians in protests along the Israel-Gaza border and accused Israel of excessive force, only the US and Australia voted against.

Agelbert NOTE:Yep. In the face of U.S. "Human Rights" reports 😇 , which routinely consist of amazingly selective condemnation of some countries, while others 😈 are ignored or given sainthood, China has countered with Human Rights Reports about the U.S., where China has a thing or two to say about the consistent U.S. Human Rights Violations REALITY. I live here. They are correct. It has, if anything, gotten WORSE since 2014. Anyone who calls this "anti-U.S. commie propaganda" is in Capitalist Worshipping La La Land.

Quote

2014 report

China published a report on the United States' human rights situation on June 26, 2015, hitting back at U.S. remarks about China.

The report, titled "The Human Rights Record of the United States in 2014," was released by the Information Office of the State Council, China's Cabinet, in response to "the 2014 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices" issued by the U.S. State Department on June 25 local time.

China's report states that the U.S. made comments on the human rights situations in many countries while showing not a bit of regret for or intention to improve its own terrible human rights record.

"The U.S., a self-proclaimed human rights defender, saw no improvements in its existent human rights issues, but reported numerous new problems," it says.

While its own human rights situation was increasingly grave, the U.S. violated human rights in other countries in a more brazen manner, and was given more "red cards" in the international human rights field, according to the report.

Ji Hong, a research fellow with Institute of American Studies under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said America does not hold the moral high ground to tutor or judge others in that itself is also plagued by major human rights issues. According to Ji, who took part in drafting the report, US racial problems even deteriorated during the Obama presidency. "In the past, there were only implicit discrimination against ethnic minorities, but recent cases such as Charleston shooting spree reflected a more flagrant bias."

VIOLENCE & TORTURE

The U.S. was haunted by spreading guns, frequent occurrence of violent crimes, which threatened citizens' civil rights. The excessive use of force by police officers led to many deaths, sparking public outcry, the report says.

An unarmed 18-year-old African-American Michael Brown was shot dead by a white police officer named Darren Wilson in Ferguson, a town in Missouri. After the grand jury of both Missouri and New York decided to bring no charges against the white police officer, massive protests broke out in more than 170 cities nationwide, it cites cn.nytimes.com as saying."The U.S. used cruel tortures indiscriminately, notably those carried out by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)," it says.

To acquire intelligence from suspects of terrorism and extremism, the CIA used brutal methods, such as sleep deprivation, waterboarding, long-term solitary confinement, slamming prisoners against the wall, lashing, death threat and even "rectal rehydration" or rectal feeding, according to the report.DISCRIMINATION & ABUSE

"The U.S. is a country with grim problems of racial discrimination, and institutional discrimination against ethnic minorities continued," according to the report.

Serious racial bias persisted in the police and justice systems. Minority groups and indigenous people are subject to unfairness in environment, election, health care, housing, education and other fields, it says. In August 2014, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, in its concluding observation on the periodic report of the U.S. on the latter's implementation of relevant convention, slammed the U.S. for violating the rights of ethnic minorities, indigenous people, immigrants and other minority groups.

It criticized the fact that members of racial and ethnic minorities continued to be disproportionately arrested, incarcerated and subjected to harsher sentences, according to the report.

"American women and children's rights were not fully protected," it says, adding that women were discriminated at workplaces, and domestic violence was prevalent.

The report quotes media reports as saying that 2.1 million American women on average were assaulted by men each year. Three females were murdered by their partner each day, and four females died each day as a result of abuse.

Also, "millions of American children were homeless." Three children died each day as a result of abuse. School violence and sex assaults were pervasive and gun shootings happened from time to time, it says.

MONEY POLITICS

"Money is a deciding factor in the U.S. politics, and the U.S. citizens' political rights were not properly protected," the report says.

Despite the highest midterm election spending in history, general election voter turnout for the 2014 midterms was the lowest since World War II, according to the report.

"Dark money" flowed into elections, and the voting rights of racial minorities and other groups were intentionally suppressed, it says, adding that a few interest groups with power were able to influence the government's decision-making.

The U.S. democratic system was experiencing a crisis of representation, it says.

"Ordinary citizens feel that their supposedly democratic government no longer truly reflects their interests and is under the control of a variety of shadowy elites," the report cites Foreign Affairs as saying.

INEQUALITY

"Although the U.S. is the most developed country in the world, it is hard for the economic and social rights of its citizens to be soundly ensured," the report says.

In the process of economic recovery, the income inequality continued to be enlarged, the basic living conditions for the homeless people deteriorated, the health care system operated terribly and the education rights of average citizens were violated, according to the report.

VIOLATIONS ELSEWHERE

In the field of international human rights, the U.S. has long refused to approve some core human rights conventions of the United Nations and voted against some important UN human rights resolutions, the report says.

National Security Agency and other intelligence-gathering apparatus of the U.S. for a long time have spied on world leaders and civilians, according to the report.

Moreover, the U.S. continued to go even further to violate human rights in other countries, including infringing the privacy of citizens of other countries with the overseas monitoring project, killing large numbers of innocent civilians of other countries in drone strikes, and raping and killing locals by U.S. soldiers garrisoned overseas, it says.

Friday's report was the 16th such annual report published by China in response to U.S. attacks. Li Daojun, a professor with Law School of Shandong University, said the U.S. and China should expand mutual exchange and recognition on human rights causes. "The U.S. puts political rights above all else while China seeks to focus more on ensuring people's economic opportunities and development. In essence, it's the same because the two are interdependent."

[15]

The 2014 report stated:

On June 25 local time, the State Department of the United States released its country reports on human rights practices once again, making comments on the human rights situations in many countries while showing not a bit of regret for or intention to improve its own terrible human rights record. Plenty of facts show that, in 2014, the U.S., a self-proclaimed human rights defender, saw no improvements in its existent human rights issues, but reported numerous new problems. While its own human rights situation was increasingly grave, the U.S. violated human rights in other countries in a more brazen manner, and was given more "red cards" in the international human rights field.

The U.S. was haunted by spreading guns, frequent occurrence of violent crimes, which threatened citizens' civil rights. Statistics showed that the use of firearms in the U.S. was behind 69 percent of murders, while for robberies, the figure was 40 percent, and for aggravated assaults, 21.6 percent (edition.cnn.com). The excessive use of force by police officers led to many deaths, sparking public outcry. An unarmed 18-year-old African-American Michael Brown was shot dead by a white police officer named Darren Wilson in Ferguson, a town in Missouri. After the grand jury of both Missouri and New York decided to bring no charges against the white police officer, massive protests broke out in more than 170 cities nationwide (cn.nytimes.com, November 25, 2014).

The U.S. used cruel tortures indiscriminately, notably those carried out by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). To acquire intelligence from suspects of terrorism and extremism, the CIA used brutal methods, such as sleep deprivation, waterboarding, long-term solitary confinement, slamming prisoners against the wall, lashing, death threat and even "rectal rehydration" orrectal feeding. United Nations human rights convention institutions such as the UN Human Rights Committee and the Committee Against Torture had raised their concerns over issues in the U.S., including terrible detention conditions for convicts awaiting execution, abuse of brutal methods, secret detention, indefinite arbitrary detention, and illegal wire-tapping which infringed citizens' privacy. These institutions called on the U.S. to conduct swift, effective and fair investigations into all brutal behaviors and abuse of forces of the police force (www.un.org).

The U.S. is a country with grim problems of racial discrimination, and institutional discrimination against ethnic minorities continued. Serious racial bias persisted in the police and justice systems. Minority groups and indigenous people are subject to unfairness in environment, election, health care, housing, education and other fields. In August 2014, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, in its concluding observation on the periodic report of the U.S. on the latter's implementation of relevant convention, slammed the U.S. for violating the rights of ethnic minorities, indigenous people, immigrants and other minority groups. It criticized the fact that members of racial and ethnic minorities continued to be disproportionately arrested, incarcerated and subjected to harsher sentences (tbinternet.ohchr.org).

Money is a deciding factor in the U.S. politics, and the U.S. citizens' political rights were not properly protected. Despite the highest midterm election spending in history, general election voter turnout for the 2014 midterms was the lowest since World War II. "Dark money" flowed into elections, and the voting rights of racial minorities and other groups were intentionally suppressed. A few interest groups with power were able to influence the government's decision-making. As a renowned scholar pointed out sharply, the U.S. democratic system was experiencing a crisis of representation. "Ordinary citizens feel that their supposedly democratic government no longer truly reflects their interests and is under the control of a variety of shadowy elites (Foreign Affairs, September/October 2014)."

Although the U.S. is the most developed country in the world, it is hard for the economic and social rights of its citizens to be soundly ensured. In the process of economic recovery, the income inequality continued to be enlarged, the basic living conditions for the homeless people deteriorated, the health care system operated terribly and the education rights of average citizens were violated. In October 2014, the United Nations Special Rapporteurs criticized the unprecedented water shut-offs in Detroit disproportionately affected the most vulnerable and poorest people, violating their right of access to drinking water and other international human rights.American women and children's rights were not fully protected. Women were discriminated at workplaces, and domestic violence was prevalent.Each year, 2.1 million American women on average were assaulted by men. Three females were murdered by their partner each day, and four females died each day as a result of abuse. In the U.S. military, reports of female soldiers getting harassed were on the rise, and more faced repercussions for reporting assaults. Millions of American children were homeless. Three children died each day as a result of abuse.School violence and sex assaults were pervasive and gun shootings happened from time to time.

National Security Agency and other intelligence-gathering apparatus of the U.S. for a long time have spied on world leaders and civilians. The U.S. has not ratified the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The U.S. government 🦍 often takes an evasive or uncooperative attitude toward the criticism of the United Nations Human Rights Council, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights of UN, the council's working groups and special rapporteurs.

The West Point graduate who promoted communism in social media posts last year has officially been discharged from the U.S. Army.

According to Fox News, Spenser Rapone’s resignation was accepted Monday, and he will be leaving the military with an other-than-honorable discharge.

Rapone’s social media posts, including a picture of him wearing a Che Guevara shirt under his military attire, sparked outrage last year, with officials blasting the West Point graduate for his radical political activism.

"The U.S. Military Academy strives to develop leaders who internalize the academy's motto of Duty, Honor, Country, and who live the Army values,” the military academy said in a statement at the time.

“Second Lieutenant Rapone's actions in no way reflect the values of the U.S. Military Academy or the U.S. Army.

“As figures of public trust, members of the military must exhibit exemplary conduct, and are prohibited from engaging in certain expressions of political speech in uniform,” West Point continued.

“Second Lieutenant Rapone's chain of command is aware of his actions and is looking into the matter. The academy is prepared to assist the officer's chain of command as required.”

According to The Daily Caller 🦕, former Democratic congressman from Pennsylvania, Jason Altmire, who nominated Rapone for the elite military institution, also disavowed the former cadet’s actions, calling them “abhorrent.”

“While I strongly support the rights of American citizens to express their opinions, the actions of 2nd Lieutenant Rapone are abhorrent and appear to be in clear violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, in addition to being inconsistent with the values of the United States Military Academy,” the former lawmaker said last year.

“I have no doubt that the U.S. Army will take appropriate action.”

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) welcomed the decision to discharge the West Point graduate, noting that Rapone’s pictures suggest that he supported U.S. enemies.

“While in uniform, Spenser Rapone advocated for communism and political violence, and expressed support and sympathy for enemies of the United States,” Rubio said, as reported by Fox News.

“I’m glad to see that they have given him an ‘other-than-honorable’ discharge.”

According to the news network, Rapone said that he “knew there could be repercussions,” to his actions and that his “military career is dead in the water.”

“On the other hand, many people reached out and showed me support,” he said.

“There are a lot of veterans both active duty and not that feel like I do.”

Quote

"I would encourage all soldiers who have a conscience to lay down their arms and join me and so many others who are willing to stop serving the agents of imperialism and join us in a revolutionary movement," Rapone added.

Rapone also posted a picture on Twitter Monday showing him giving the middle finger to the sign outside Fort Drum, along with the caption, “One final salute.”

This took me back to the days when I wore those uniforms. Shining that tiny breast plate (a token symbol of an ancient large breastplate) was always a chore. You also had to be very careful when you attached it to the white canvas straps that attach to the dummy powder box (a token symbol from the Revolutionary War) because the Brasso polish you used on the breastplate, which comes in contact with the 4 bent metal clasps underneath the breastplate, might stain the white straps (a lot of cadets got demerits for that when we had to wear the full dress gray uniform for parades) . You put everything on and THEN carefully positioned the breastplate. Full dress gray is the one with that ridiculous three lines of round gold colored fake buttons in the front. The military just LOVES shiny objects.

I admire the this brave man of conscience, Spenser Rapone 🌟, for realizing the ethical and moral value of Communism and its vast superiority over our ethically and morally bankrupt Capitalist System Cruelty.

I salute him.

But, I ain't done yet.

This is MY CONSTANT SALUTE to anyone who thinks Capitalism is "the best system".

Have a nice Brainwashed Capitalist day.

« Last Edit: June 20, 2018, 04:28:51 pm by AGelbert »

Logged

Leges Sine Moribus VanaeFaith, if it has not works, is dead, being alone.

I think capitalism is a very mixed bag (some very, very bad issues, I do admit) , but people should be allowed to be communist if they want to be. Including West Point cadets.

Including anybody.

What I find abhorrent is the lack of tolerance. Kicking this young man out over his political beliefs is very obviously a clear violation of his rights as guaranteed by the US Constitution. But who cares, right? He's a communist.

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

------------ Martin Niemoller

Capitalism US Style 🦍 has always been totally intolerant of Communism and any of its Socialist iterations here and abroad. There never has been any freedom in this country to be a Communist/Socialist, unless you plan to live in poverty with your Socialist principles. That is NOT "freedom". Yeah, you are "free" to believe any old thing you want and embrace any "ism" you want, AS LONG AS YOU DON'T CRITICIZE DA PROFITS OF DA BIDNESS.

The hysteria over the "Communist threat to our freedoms" goes all the way back to Hoover, even before that Capitalist Crook became he head of the FBI.

And even decades before that, the tyranny against the Socialists in Chicago (Haymarket arrests and Kangarro Court trials) evidenced the deep hatred and brutal intolerance for Socialism in this country by the business people who NEVER want to be on an equal footing with their employees in regard to pay, no matter how valuable the employee.

The Capitalist DISEASE forces people with high work skills to start their own business, thereby perpetrating the disease. It pits all against all in an insane race to see who pays their employees LESS, rather than motivate people to build a better, more caring society where people look to help each other, rather than stomp each other into the ground for profit.

The reason Italy did not go Socialist after WWII is because our CIA KILLED all the leaders of the movement there. Now Italy is going full fascist AGAIN, thanks to OUR Capitalist Skullduggery.

After WWII, the CIA sent a nice message to France, as well. France was leaning towards Socialst egalitarian policies and our CIA massively overdosed a WHOLE TOWN in France with LSD. It wasn't to "try the drug out".

There are around ten or more other countries where other anti-socialst murder and mayhem Capitalist skullduggery was practiced. It continues to this day.

The Black Panthers, a NON-VIOLENT (though the propaganda BULLSHIT claimed otherwise) Socialst group were ruthllessly gunned down in various cities in the USA.

The McCarthy era witch hunts against Socialsts/Communists has never really gone away for a Capitalist reason.

Equality of opportunity and payment for work done, the basic idea behind Socialism, is a threat to any greed based system in general, and Capitalism in particular.

Capitalists don't give a rats ass about anybody's "rights". All that lip service about "freedom" is fine and dandy as long as the Socialist doesn't try to unionize da bidness. It's okay in the USA for Socialists to be "noble = poor", but the moment they actively question the bankrupt ethics of Capitalists, they get Capitalist Police State Crushed.

THAT is the REAL history of Capitalism and Capitalists in the USA.

Donald Trump is, and always has been, a TRUE REPRESENTATIVE of what Capitalism (which is nothing but dressed up Fascism) is.

Logged

Leges Sine Moribus VanaeFaith, if it has not works, is dead, being alone.

Lynne Haney is a professor of sociology at New York University who has spent years studying a population that is often ignored, if not misunderstood and ridiculed, by policy makers and the general public: low-income fathers who owe child support debt. She has interviewed more than a hundred such men and observed about 1,200 child support cases. Haney says only about 10 percent reflect the stereotype that “child support” brings to mind — a father who refuses to take responsibility for his children. In reality, most care about their families but live in a constant state of financial instability, where one wrong move can set them back years.

“We know a whole lot about poor women and their vulnerabilities, for decades and decades of research has debunked a lot of myths about them,” Haney said. “But we haven’t had a similar rethinking of poor men.”

Like the “welfare queens” of the past, such noncustodial parents have become the latest targets of conservatives seeking to shrink the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), also known as food stamps. On Thursday, House Republicans passed their version of the Farm Bill, which includes a number of provisions that analysts estimate would eliminate or reduce SNAP benefits for 2 million people and about 1 million families. SNAP already has strict time limits for benefits and work requirements for many participants, but conservatives are seeking new restrictions as they search for ways to pay for their tax cuts for the rich.

Workplace Deaths ☠️ Are Rising. Trump-Era 🦀 Budget Cuts Could Make It Worse.

BYBruce Vail In These Times

PUBLISHED June 22, 2018

SNIPPET:

The number of deaths hit a total of 5,190 in 2016, up from 4,836 in 2015, according to an April 2018 report by the AFL-CIO. That’s about 14 deaths each day from preventable worker accidents. It’s also the third year in a row that the number has inched up, and the highest death rate since 2010, the labor federation reported.

Workplace safety systems are “definitely in the failure mode,” says Peter Dooley, a consultant with the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health who was worked closely with labor unions over the years. “In the last two years it is getting dramatically worse. It’s just outrageous.”

The precise reasons for the rise are not simply stated, adds Peg Seminario, AFL-CIO’s long-time director of occupational safety and health. Overall patterns such as very high rates of injury in the logging and construction industries are consistent over time, she says, and there is no single employment trend that accounts for the recent rise. “The numbers are actually down in construction, but they are up almost everywhere else,” she says.

Inadequate enforcement of existing safety rules is the most commonly cited explanation for the rise, Seminario tells In These Times.

Agelbert NOTE: Happy Days are HERE AGAIN for Capitalism. The "Good old Days" of TOTALLY UNREGULATED CAPITALISM have returned. Oh. Happy Day for "Liberty, Freedom, Justice and the American Way". 😈 👹 💵 🎩 🍌 🏴‍☠️

Logged

Leges Sine Moribus VanaeFaith, if it has not works, is dead, being alone.

Last month, Nexus Media reported on a study in Environmental Politics showing that racial resentment, specifically against President Obama, is perhaps one reason for the increased polarization in climate change. The general idea of the study is that old white men who make up the denier demographic saw a black man in power who cared about climate change, and that pushed them further into denial. The Sierra Club’s magazine covered the study this week, which brought it to the attention of James Delingpole at Breitbart.

Interestingly, Delingpole didn’t even really bother trying to refute in his post, instead just suggesting that because Republicans are “more skeptical of the mainstream media” and are “better-informed generally,” they “have been quicker to grasp the truth than Democrats.” Given the expose last year showing how Breitbart “smuggled Nazi and White Nationalist ideas into the mainstream,” it comes as no surprise that Delingpole doesn’t bother trying to disprove the idea that deniers are racist.

While the study doesn’t say it outright, anyone who’s spent any amount of time in the dredges of a comment section or dealing with trolls on social media knows that it generally doesn’t take much scrolling through a denier’s feed to find some barely or not-at-all disguised racism. Granted, those who focus specifically on climate tend not to stray into other areas, but the generalists, so to speak, tend to hold a range of… we’ll say “deplorable” opinions.

A Forbes piece published yesterday by Dr. Marshall Shepherd, the second African American President of the American Meteorological Society, on deniers using his race to push back on his work offers just the latest example of the latent undercurrent of racism within the denial community (even from those with PhDs). Shepherd’s experiences are just one part of why it’s so important that climate and environmental groups face our own whiteness problem, an issue addressed by sociologist Dorceta Taylor in a new Yale360 interview.

Unfortunately, it’s not just America’s age-old grapple with the legacy of slavery that’s making headlines these days. The kidnapping, drugging, and physical and mental abuse of children, now likely turned to an illegal semi-permanent detainment with well-documented and horrific long-term psychological ramifications, is an absolute crisis of humanity.

And as much as we might like to focus on anything but this atrocity, like most everything else, it too has a climate connection. One of the tent cities erected to house children in Texas is facing 100+ degree heat, offering little respite for those thrown into its terrible conditions. And many of those facing that threat are coming from the Dry Corridor of Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, where the climate change-boosted swing of drought and deluge has wreaked havoc on subsistence farming. Combined with years of horrific violence stemming from US policies, the agricultural crisis is yet another factor leaving people with little choice but relocation.

And as climate change continues, things will only get worse. Which is why, as Kate Aronoff wrote recently, “Abolishing ICE is Good Climate Policy.” As climate change continues making it harder for those only barely scraping by to survive, we’re going to see more migration. The only moral response is compassion, not militarism, opening our arms and our borders to those who like all white American families at one point or another, are seeking a piece of the American dream and an escape from an increasingly hostile homeland. This spirit of kindness and compassion is beautifully expressed in a Scientific American piece by NASA’s Kate Marvel, whose experience as a mother formented her concern about climate change.

Much like our need to incorporate people of color more fully into the climate community, so too must women’s voices be heard. Fortunately, that message is starting to ring out, with former president of Ireland Mary Robinson saying us on Monday that “climate change is a man-made problem and must have a feminist solution.” One paleoclimatologist leading that charge, with an admirable humility, is Dr. Sarah Myhre. Her recent profile in Grist deals not only with the constant struggle of balancing emotionally honest outreach to the public with the outdated maxim of scientific objectivity, but also the constant assault of misogyny that women face, much like the ever-present racism Dr. Shepherd endures.

And finally, given that it’s Pride month, we would be remiss to not point out that the LGBTQ+ community faces similar discrimination from the same old white status-quo men. (Let’s not forget that climate deniers like those in Britain's UKIP party or supposed Christian leaders in the US regularly blame extreme weather disasters on homosexuality.) It’s also worth noting that members LGBTQ folks are particularly vulnerable to climate disruption due to the discrimination they face by church-run shelters, for example.

This all comes together in a story from Michigan this week, where GOP state senator Patrick Colbeck proposed major overhauls to the state’s social studies curriculum, removing climate change, mentions of the accomplishments and challenges facing the LGBT, American Indian, Latinx, immigrant communities, while also claiming that giving rights to some is an infringement on the rights of others. (He also explained to the state’s education regulators in his notes on the draft that the KKK was created to be an “anti-Republican” organization, not an “anti-black” one.)

The status quo, of white men with power who couldn’t care less about the lives of others so long as the paychecks keep coming in, is a multi-faceted enemy which will only be overcome by a coordinated effort among all the rest of us.

Nothing exists in a vacuum, both literally and figuratively. And climate change is certainly no exception. Happy Pride Month and Refugee Week everyone. Celebrate our shared humanity, then there’s work to do.

Regardless of what one thinks about the restaurant owner that kicked out Sarah Huckabee Sanders, The Donald's Tweet about it being dirty and needing paint is so typical of his knee-jerk way of responding to things that happen in the world that he doesn't like.

They don't like me and my codependent sidekick? They must be filthy scumbags, then.

In Trump's mind anyone who doesn't like him is automatically a target, and he just shoots from the hip with his Social Media Gun.

Trumpovetsky stopped his maturation process sometime before Kindergarten. He never learned the important lessons you are supposed to accumulate there.

[/size]

RE

Well said.

Logged

Leges Sine Moribus VanaeFaith, if it has not works, is dead, being alone.

The voting record of Anthony Kennedy is very much a mixed bag. He wrote the opinion sanctioning gay marriage, but he also wrote the majority opinion on Citizen's United, one of the worst (possibly the worst) Supreme Court decisions of all time. I think he probably tried to be fair, and it ended up often putting him at odds with the conservatives like Scalia and Thomas....but in the final analysis, his tenure on the court probably did more harm than good.

Unfortunately, the next nominee is liable to be much worse. The Supreme Court has failed the American people in so many ways I could list. On civil seizure. On surveillance. On gay wedding cakes. Some of those failures are more important than others. Citizens' United is huge and very, very bad, for regular people, and great for billionaires.

The 81-year-old Kennedy, an appointee of former President Ronald Reagan's, who has long been considered a “swing vote” on the court, announced his retirement on Wednesday.

“This is a disaster for everyone who believes in the 'We the People' vision of the Constitution,” Merkley tweeted.

In a follow-up tweet, Merkley noted that he was “worried” about the standing of Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion.

Kennedy’s retirement opens the door for President Trump to nominate a second conservative justice to the Supreme Court. Anti-abortion advocates are expected to pursue more cases if the court leans right.

Emboldened by the Trump administration, anti-abortion advocates have been gearing up to potentially move to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Trump said he will immediately begin his search for Kennedy's replacement.

After former EPA director of scheduling Millan Hupp testified to a congressional committee that she had tried to obtain a used mattress from Trump Tower for her boss, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt went after her, smearing her name to conservative groups and assuring them that she couldn’t be trusted, according to a Thursday Daily Beast report.

Before her testimony, which she had no choice but to deliver, Hupp was one of Pruitt’s most loyal aides, sticking with him since his attorney general campaign in Oklahoma.

Pruitt is already reportedly under investigation due to charges levied by his former chief of staff, Kevin Chmielewski, who claims that Pruitt leaked damaging information about him when he suspected that Chmielewski was leaking to the media.

Sources told the Daily Beast that Pruitt also tells his employees to pitch “oppo hits” to media outlets about other staffers who left on bad terms.

Sonali Kolhatkar is a columnist for Truthdig. She also is the founder, host and executive producer of "Rising Up With Sonali," a television and radio show that airs on Free Speech TV (Dish Network, DirecTV,…

SNIPPET:

By its very definition, “protest” is an act of disapproval. It cannot be made with kind words, fake smiles, handshakes or quiet dinners. Protest is often an act of rage against a perceived injustice, and at this moment Americans are outraged and have every right to nonviolently confront Trump’s defenders in the streets, in restaurants and outside their homes.

Rep. Maxine Waters , D-Calif., gets it. The intrepid progressive urged her supporters to act, saying that if they “see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd and you push back on them and you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere.”

A careful reading of her words makes it imminently clear that Waters believes in raucous and peaceful protest. Contrast that with Trump, who has literally called for violence against individuals and whole communities repeatedly. Worse than Trump threatening Waters for her statement has been the response of Waters’ fellow Democrats. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer issued a statement showing immense cowardice, saying, “If you disagree with a politician, organize your fellow citizens to action and vote them out of office. But no one should call for the harassment of political opponents. That’s not right. That’s not American.”

Actually it is very American to engage in protest, whether or not Schumer interprets that as “harassment.” What is “not right” are Trump’s policies and Schumer’s unwillingness to confront them more harshly. Other Democrats echoed Schumer in denouncing Waters. Waters rightly refused to capitulate to the weak-willed establishment wing of her party and demanded a refocusing of efforts on what matters, saying, “I decided I’m just talking about the children. I want the children released, I want a plan. I want a plan for what this administration is going to do to connect these children.”

House Speaker Paul Ryan had the audacity to call on Waters to apologize, saying, “There is no place for this,” even though the Republican leader has, for well over a year, silently acquiesced to the ugliest and most violent of discourses from the president he continues to back. Perhaps Ryan is truly worried he too may no longer be able to eat out in peace or enter and exit his home without facing protesters in the streets outside. If so, Waters and the activists she spoke to in her statements are the real winners in the war for the nation’s moral conscience.

There is nothing civil about a president and Supreme Court deciding to ban people from whole nations vis-à-vis the Muslim ban ruling by the Supreme Court this week. There is nothing civil about more than 2,000 children being held hostage by the Trump administration. There is nothing civil about the massive numbers of undercounted deaths in Puerto Rico from Hurricane Maria for which Trump has yet to be held accountable. There is nothing civil about Trump’s undoing of the Iran nuclear deal. There is nothing civil about the GOP’s offensive on Obamacare, its tax giveaway to the rich, its attacks on voting rights or the undermining of unions. In the face of such relentless daily assaults on our Constitution, our social safety net, our human rights and dignity, Schumer and his ilk want us to remain civil?

It is quite likely that proponents of slavery, Jim Crow racism, Japanese-American internment, etc., called for calm over fury. Nothing helps the status quo quite like civil discourse in the face of daily destruction.

Wilkinson and her staff concluded they could not serve Sanders in good conscience because of her immoral actions, not her identity.

Some, not I, would say the staff had no say since they had no risk in the business. Capitalism has a way of forcing everyone to a lowest common denominator. A business can go out of business if it tries to pay a living wage when the competition won't. Tariffs are meant to prevent unfair competition as one example of necessary regulation to fix the problem. The idea is hundreds of years old. The responsibility of leveling tariffs left to the president in our constitution. Yet so called progressives are acting like it is a poison Trump personally invented. Capitalism corrupts and it corrupts absolutely. It robs people of being able to know right from wrong. In this situation the decision was really the wish of the employees which the owner could have vetoed. They called her in to make the decision. Going along with them was the right thing to do from any point of view, wise or decent. They had respect enough for the owner to have her come in and make the decision and that was wise for all that she returned that respect. Far better for the health of the business than to risk the loss of a few customers who are OK with immorality. The ones lost would be no loss. The infectious gain in restaurant moral will bring in new customers.

This issue is revealing everyones true colors. The idea that someone has the right not to serve someone in their restaurant is making those who think they can own other people very uncomfortable. Conservatives, some even here in the diner, would have you believe that not being a slave to the system and not serving the rich and the powerful makes you immoral. These same people would have no trouble throwing out a bum. What's the difference? Capital is the god of the bourgeois and it defines their morality. Only capital makes the situations different.

This Is The World They Want

TPTB will kill most of us quite happily to avoid losing their grip on the profit over planet business as usual destroying the biosphere. Capitalism is the Cancer giving us Hydrocarbon Hell.

Logged

Leges Sine Moribus VanaeFaith, if it has not works, is dead, being alone.

That’s the card you’re pulling now, Trump supporters?That’s where you’ve landed?That’s your go-to play at this stage of the game?It’s a little late for you to roll that out now, isn’t it?

After voting for a self-proclaimed genitalia-grabber.After he suggested dissenters at his rallies should be beaten up.After hearing him call violent nazis “fine people.”After he bulldozed sacred Native American lands and turned frigid hoses on tribe elders.After he ignored mass deaths in Puerto Rico and vilified their public servants.After he began dismantling protections to our planet and shrinking our national parks.After witnessing Flint, Michigan go without clean water.After watching exhausted refugee families stranded at airports.After leveraging religion to justify all manner of discrimination.After ignoring evidence of a Russian interference that threatens our national sovereignty.After seeing ICE raids in hospital rooms and workplaces.After his gross, reckless fabrications about Muslims and Mexicans and immigrants.After witnessing him work tirelessly to take healthcare from the sick and the poor.After he vilified kneeling black athletes and badgered their employers into silencing their peaceful protest.After his unhinged Twitter rants against private citizens and their businesses, against celebrities and political opponents and world leaders.After terrorizing teenage shooting survivors on social media.After allowing the radicalized Christian right and soulless NRA gun zealots to shape national policy.After sanctioning Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller and Sebastian Gorka and Jeff Sessions.After retweeting the toxic filth of Dana Loesch and Laura Ingraham and Ann Coulter.After celebrating while he’s alienated our greatest allies and aligned with malevolent dictators.After your silence in the face of migrant children being ripped from their parent’s arms and placed in dog kennels.After digging in your heels for the past two years on every bit of it.Now you want to pretend to be civilized?Now want to talk about measured debate?Now you want to wag your finger at us for being disrespectful?Now you want to shame us for our supposed lack of manners?Now you want to gaslight us into guilt and apology—as if we’ve lost our dignity, as if we’ve sacrificed our humanity, as if we’ve bastardized our religion, as if we’re the ones impervious to other people’s feelings.

With all due respect—to hell with your phony civility.

No, you don’t get to play that card. That request is off the table for you.

You lost that moral high ground somewhere between excusing his mocking of a disabled reporter—and celebrating brown-skinned kids in cages.

Your lengthy, sickening body of work over the past two and a half years is the greatest witness of your fraudulence.

You don’t really want civility, anyway. If you did, you wouldn’t still be supporting this President. Civility not what you’re asking for. If you were simply asking for that, we wouldn’t have an issue.

You want something else:You want consent to your abject cruelty. You’re not going to get it.You want our silence in the face of perversions of justice. It will not be forthcoming.You want tacit approval for a white Evangelical theocracy. That ain’t gonna happen.You want to us to quietly witness this President dismantling democracy. We’re simply not going to.You want us worship your white, angry, American, gun-toting God. We won’t.You want us to join you in your blind idolatry of a man fully lacking nobility. We won’t be.You want the steady stream of Sarah Sanders lies, alternative Fox News facts to go unchecked. We’re not giving you that courtesy.You want us to allow you to perpetuate dangerous false stereotypes of immigrants and young black men and Transgender people. We’re not going to.You want us excuse your supremacy and indulge your privilege and sanction your President’s bigotry and applaud this Administration’s legislated assaults on marginalized communities. It’s gonna be a long wait, friend.

No, we’re not doing any of that.

What we are going to do, is clearly, repeatedly, and unapologetically oppose it all with everything we have.We’re going to push back hard against every divisive meme you produce, every incendiary Tweet he manufactures, every human rights atrocity this Administration generates, every effort you make to normalize monstrous behavior or excuse his ramblings.

We’re going to be unflinching, and we’re going to use our outside voices, and we aren’t going to mince words when it comes to the inherent worth of human beings, the affronts on our Constitution, or the hijacking of our faith traditions.

You can call that uncivilized if you’d like, but honestly we don’t give a damn.

We’re going to be profoundly pissed off whenever diversity is threatened or when human beings are treated as less-than or when religion is invoked to do harm or when America’s stability is under attack.

In the face of the inhumane things on display in this country right now, we’ll take the cause of humanity and our volume every single time.

We’re going to be loud in the cause of love, even if that sounds like anger in your ears.

Democrats have won the national vote in six of the last seven presidential elections, which, with the retirement of Anthony Kennedy, will have resulted in the appointment of eight of the Supreme Court’s nine justices. And yet four of those justices will have been appointed by presidents who took office despite having fewer votes than their opponent. Republicans will have increasingly solid control of the court’s majority, with the chance to replace the sometimes-wavering Kennedy with a never-wavering conservative movement stalwart.

Over the last generation, the Republican Party has moved rapidly rightward, while the center of public opinion has not. It is almost impossible to find a substantive basis in public opinion for Republican government. On health care, taxes, immigration, guns, the GOP has left America behind in its race to the far right. But the Supreme Court underscores its ability to counteract the undertow of its deepening, unpopular extremism by marshaling countermajoritiarian power.

This is the way that the neocon (Hillary Clinton wing) Democrat Jonathan Chait, writing at the Democratic Party propaganda-organ New York magazine, got something profoundly correct, for a change. That quotation opened Chait’s June 27th commentary, which was titled "The Republican Court and the Era of Minority Rule”.

Neoconservatives (otherwise called “America’s imperialists” but they’re basically no different from imperialists in other countries) now run both of America’s political Parties - not only the Republican Party - regardless of what voters might happen to think of the neoconservative philosophy.

This disparity between the non-ideological public and the virtually 100% neoconservative rulers, is due to the fact that voters have no real power in America (something that Chait noted in that excerpt, but only within a partisan Democratic-Party-versus-Republican-Party context, not any broader or more encompassing context, that questions the political and economic system itself — at a deeper level than merely “Democratic” versus “Republican”). By contrast against that powerless public, America’s aristocrats possess all of the power, and they’re imperialists (“neocons”) because they want their private international corporate empires to dominate over the entire world. But this insightful (though too narrowly focused) opening from Chait shows that even neoconservatives (such as he) aren’t always wrong about everything.

In fact, this opening, from a Democratic Party neoconservative, about America’s increasing conservative (Republican) dictatorship, was entirely truthful within its partisan narrow scope, and therefore (to that extent) more like an exemplification of the proverbial “infinite monkey theorem” — that “a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type a given text, such as the complete works of William Shakespeare.”

However, Chait’s ‘Shakespearean' string ended precisely there, when he immediately followed up that opening statement of his, by saying, “The story really begins in December 2000,” and he proceeded to blame everything on Bush-v.-Gore, and on the way that the Republican operatives raped the American nation on 9 December 2000. This problem of America’s being a dictatorship, however, actually goes far deeper — and farther back — than that Republican Party victory (as will be shown here).

The only comprehensive and scientific study which has ever been done of whether the US is a democracy or instead a dictatorship, was published in 2014, and it found that, “In the United States, our findings indicate, the majority does not rule — at least not in the causal sense of actually determining policy outcomes.”

Consequently, for example, our opinions of “Saddam’s WMD” were simply being manipulated by the controlling owners of US-based international corporations, just as those same super-rich individuals (most of whom are Americans) have controlled whom the nine people will be who rule from the Supreme Court, on what the US Constitution means, and doesn’t mean (and this judicial panel, of course, also decided Bush-v.-Gore).

So: the US Constitution has become increasingly twisted (by such jurists) to ‘mean’ things (such as aristocratic dictatorship) that were loathed by America’s Founders, who actually went to war against Britain’s aristocracy — this Constitution has become increasingly twisted to ‘mean’ things such as creating and expanding an international empire, and as allowing US taxpayers to be forced to subsidize the political speech of some religions and not of other religions, nor of opponents of all religions. (Especially the Republican Party benefits enormously from empowering evangelical pastors to preach Republican propaganda to their congregations.)

According to that scientific study, the United States, during the period that was studied, which extended from 1981 through to 2002, which was virtually the entire twenty years PRIOR to Bush-.v.-Gore — and this is quoting now directly from the study itself: “The preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.”

So: how does this — the aristocracy’s dictatorial grip on America’s Government — function? Not only the 2000 US Presidential ‘election’ was stolen from the American electorate, but so too are almost all US national elections stolen, especially the crucial ones, such as the political primary elections to Congress and the Presidency, for candidates to become the selected nominees of each of the two political Parties and thus to become offered to the public as the final contestants who might actually win those offices in the US national Government. Just as Bernie Sanders was the most-preferred of all candidates in 2016 to become the US President but the nomination was stolen from him by the Democratic National Committee for Hillary Clinton, it’s the same in most ‘elections’ to American national offices. And this dictatorship by the super-rich didn’t start with Bush.-v.-Gore, such as Chait alleges.

Right now, the US aristocracy, who control all of the large US corporations — including all of the major news-media — are pushing very hard to impose a kind of lock-down against the few media that they don’t control: against the media whose only presence is online, because these small media lack the funding to have either a print-and-paper presence, or else network broadcast and telecast facilities or a cable network.

The way that the ‘news’-giants propagandize this lockdown against unwanted truths, is by calling those small media sites (the half-dozen or so which do publish the elsewhere prohibited truths) ‘fake news’ media, and by alleging that only the print-broadcast-cable ‘news’ media (the very same ‘news’media which had deceived the public in 2002 to fear “Saddam’s WMD” and which had ‘justified’ in 2011 Obama’s destruction of Libya, and his subsequent invasion of Syria) ought to be trusted by the American people. Obviously, that’s crazy, but America’s aristocrats want the public to believe this way.

On June 27th, Gallup reported:

Gallup and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation conducted a web-based experiment to assess the effectiveness of a news source rating tool designed to help online news consumers discriminate between real news and misinformation. The tool identifies news organizations as reliable (using a green cue) or unreliable (using a red cue) based on evaluations of their work, funding and other factors by experienced journalists.

The Gallup news-report closed: “Gallup and Knight Foundation acknowledge support for this research provided by the Ford Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Open Society Foundations.” All of them are neoconservative organizations, which represent the interests of America’s billionaires — not of the public anywhere.

The technical report of this experiment concluded that mainstream news-media can increase the public’s prejudice against non-mainstream news-media, by having their own hired “experienced journalists” label those small competing news-media as providers of ‘misinformation’ instead of ‘news’:

This survey experiment evaluated the effect of a specific source rating tool — cues about news organization trustworthiness based on evaluations from experienced journalists. The findings suggest that using this approach may help combat online misinformation and restore confidence in obtaining quality news.

Of course, this finding is very good news for America’s billionaires, because further suppressing what the aristocrats are calling ‘misinformation’ (such as this) will enable them to increase their dictatorship, even more.

As time goes by, the means of deceiving the public, become even cagier than they were before. The way that the dictatorship in America functions is by deceiving the public; and perhaps this Gallup-Knight-Ford-Gates-Soros study has helped them to develop a more effective “tool” to do that.

Maybe the next big invasion will be of Iran. American-and-allied media seem to be focusing increasingly on this particular target. Perhaps “experienced journalists” are being promoted right now, for that very purpose. With Donald Trump in power, Iran is systematically becoming the main next target. It was his top target even before he became elected; and one can even say that he was selected by the US aristocracy, and by Israel's aristocracy, and by the Saud family who own Saudi Arabia, and by the leader of UAE’s royal families, mainly for this reason, to be installed to run the US regime. But, of course, they would also have done very well if Hillary Clinton had been ‘elected’.

That’s the way things are: politics in America, especially at the national level, is now merely a puppet-show. And, apparently, many if not most of the people who are pulling the strings in it don’t so much as live here — they are foreigners, though of the types that Trump (as now is obvious), relies upon, instead of persecutes (such as ‘wetbacks’).

The American people are merely the audience. We didn’t even buy this puppet-show. Those billionaires did. (The American ones also buy the puppet-theater which presents Russia as being the foreign power that controls the US Government and that ‘endangers democracy’ everywhere. During the communist era, that story-line was believable by even intelligent people, but after 24 February 1990, it no longer is.)

Surly1 is an administrator and contributing author to Doomstead Diner. He is the author of numerous rants, screeds and spittle-flecked invective here and elsewhere. He lives a quiet domestic existence in Southeastern Virginia with his wife Contrary. Descended from a long line of people to whom one could never tell anything, all opinions are his and his alone, because he paid full retail for everything he has managed to learn.

As we celebrate the nation's Independence, a virtual pallor seems to hang over the proceedings like a shitmist. There will be parades, fireworks, cookouts and picnics, and the attendant mindlessness of a hot summer day. There will be 21-gun salutes with appropriate solemnity. But in many ways, it's almost as if it's "Bizarro- Fourth of July–" similar, but a bit off. As if our hearts are not fully in it. Given that hundreds of thousands attended over 800 rallies demonstrating against government-sanctioned kidnapping of children and separation of immigrant families, they may not be. Now comes proof we're just not as patriotic as we used to be.